Mike Harden and some Tacolicious "cheese dip."
One of the best things about Tacolicious is the great group of investors that we have. It’s like the restaurant’s extended community. It makes things much more interesting and invigorating than if Joe and I were just going this whole thing alone.
Mike Harden might be one of our biggest influences. You can thank him for the chile con queso that’s on our menu. It’s Mike that insisted even we, if just for a menu moment, abandon all that’s local and sustainable and embrace the dark side (i.e. the V word).
I had no idea though that Mike, an Arkansas native, had such a connection to this dish. (He emailed me once, “What’s funny is that at home, we call it cheese dip. I only started calling it queso because it sounded fancier and I had a culinary inferiority complex.”) Or that Mexican cheese dip actually hails from his Southern state where it’s as common on restaurant tables as bread and butter. It all became clear in this kind of hysterical yet amazing documentary tracing the history of cheese dip that he sent me to watch.
I took a moment with Mike, who, when he’s not working at his real job, is obsessing over this creamy concoction that clearly speaks to his soul.
What’s your earliest cheese dip memory?
I was 7 or 8 years old. My parents took me to Mexico Chiquito, the famous restaurant in northern Little Rock. This was the only non fast food restaurant in town. They told me we were going to Mexican food and I said, ‘No way in hell!’ So we went to McDonald’s and got hamburgers and brought them to Mexico Chiquito. My sister and I had the famous Hawaiian punch. The waiter brought out the cheese dip. I reached in reluctantly, took a chip, took a dip, and I was hooked. I dropped my fries and hamburger and finished the rest of it.
So where do you get cheese dip?
They sell it everywhere. Italian restaurant? Cheese dip. Burger joint? Cheese dip. It’s like a condiment too.
But it’s Mexican, right?
Well, that’s interesting. It’s accepted as regional cuisine. It’s sent out free, like the bread you might get at a restaurant. In supermarkets there are displays of Velveeta and Ro*tel. It’s not considered Mexican. It’s just hospitality. In Arkansas you will decided where you’re going to eat based on the chips and cheese dip.
[I ask Mike what’s Ro*tel and he looks at me like I’m crazy.]
Mike followed up our interview with some more obsessive cheese dip emails. One included what he claims is the original cheese dip recipe from Mexico Chiquito as well as the history of the restaurant which claims that it started the whole cheese dip phenomenon in 1935 when a guy named Blackie Donnally came to Arkansas from a Tex-Mex border town.
Although everyone uses either Pace Picante sauace or Ro*tel now, this is the original cheese-dip recipe according to Mike. It’s not what we make at Tacolicious, but then again, we don’t come from a town called Hope.
Mexico Chiquito’s Cheese Dip
- 1 stick of butter
- 4 tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon ketchup
- a dash of salt
- 2 cups milk
- 1 pound Kraft American cheese (the real kind), cut into cubes
- Melt butter in a saucepan. Add flour and stir around until flour loses its raw taste, about 2 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients including the milk. Then add the cheese. Stir until cheese is melted.